Did Medieval Jewish Commentators Understand Biblical Parallelism? 463

DID MEDIEVAL JEWISH COMMENTATORS UNDERSTAND BIBLICAL PARALLELISM? 463

Jair HAAS Université Bar Ilan, Ramat Gan

DID MEDIEVAL JEWISH COMMENTATORS UNDERSTAND BIBLICAL PARALLELISM? (A CRITIQUE OF ROBERT HARRIS' “DISCERNING PARALLELISM”)

RÉSUMÉ

Robert Harris a tenté de montrer que les commentateurs de la Bible du Nord de la France, au Moyen Âge, étaient conscients de l'existence des parallélismes bibli- ques. Cependant, l'étude de Robert Harris, loin d'écarter les conceptions habituelles que l'on trouve sur cette question et qui sont très insatisfaisantes, a contribué à les renforcer. Les doublets sémantiques, le parallélisme en escalier ainsi que d'autres phénomènes linguistiques sont catalogués comme «parallélisme» et toute connaissance par les commentateurs de l'un de ces phénomènes est considérée d'emblée comme connaissance du parallélisme en tant que principe structurant, ce qui n'est pas la même chose. Il s'agit d'une approche anachronique qui considère comme évident ce qui en fait est à démontrer, c'est-à-dire que les commentateurs voyaient vraiment un lien entre ces différents phénomènes. Dans le fond, Harris ne parvient à montrer qu'une chose: la connaissance par les commentateurs d'une forme de parallélisme, celui de la synonymie. Pour le reste, son travail présente bien des failles, ce qui le rend peu convaincant. Harris prend souvent ses propres conceptions pour celles des commentateurs et il se contente de résumer les travaux anté- rieurs sur le sujet au lieu de mener une analyse complète et directe des textes en question.

SUMMARY

Robert Harris’ study on the awareness of parallelism among the commentators of the Northern French school of exegesis contributes to further ankering common misconceptions instead of uprooting them. Diverse phenomena such as semantic doubling, staircase parallelism and more are all labeled “parallelism”, and thus any awareness towards one or more of these phenomena is automatically interpreted as awareness towards parallelism as a structuring principle that might take the form of any of these and many other phenomena. But this is an anachronistic approach that takes for granted what really needs to be proven: that the commentators saw a connection between the different phenomena. Furthermore, many of Harris’ arguments for the awareness of different kinds of parallelism seems to be no more than a read-

Revue des études juives, 166 (3-4), juillet-décembre 2007, pp. 463-472 doi: 10.2143/REJ.166.3.2024056

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ing of his own views into the words of the commentators, and Harris does not suc- ceed in providing evidence for the awareness of other aspects of parallelism than the synonymous one. Several of the commentators are not dealt with on the basis of a comprehensive and original analysis of their exegesis, and in the greater part of the book Harris rests content summarizing earlier scholarship on the subject. This, also, contributes to the unconvincing nature of the study.

In his recent study, Discerning Parallelism — A Study in Northern French Medieval Jewish Biblical Exegesis1, Robert Harris examines the awareneness of the structuring principle of Biblical poetry that in modern research has come to be known as parallelism, in the exegesis of five cen- tral commentators of the Medieval exegetical school of Northern France: Rashi, R. Yosef Kara, Rashbam, R. Eliezer of Beaugency and R. Yosef Bekhor-Shor. Harris’ declared aim is to prove wrong the opinion set forth especially by James Kugel, that the medievals had no true understanding of parallelism as a structuring principle but saw it merely as a seconding style, that is, as a simple doubling of meaning. Thus, throughout his study Harris sets out to show that many of the categories formulated by Robert Lowth in his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrew (1753), the classic study on Biblical poetry, were indeed anticipated by the medievals, even if they did not undertake any systematic investigation of the phenomenon and their technical vocabulary, therefore, was less developed and not doing justice to their true awareness of the phenomenon. Furthermore, Harris contends that the Medieval commentators saw in parallelism a poetic device and that their comments on the existence of the phenomenon testifies to their appre- ciation of the poetic character of texts wherein it occurs2. In my opinion Harris’ treatment of the subject is unconvincing and even misleading. Having undertaken the task of writing the first full-length study on this important topic, one would expect Harris to reexamine it from a new and fresh perspective instead of, in the greater part of the book, summarizing earlier scholarship, and thus contributing to further ankering common misconceptions instead of uprooting them. This lack of comprehensive and original in-depth analysis is felt especially in the chapter treating the key-figure of Medieval Jewish Bible exegesis, Rashi. Harris mentions the conclusions reached by Mayer Gruber in his impressive treatment of the Psalms commentary, that Rashi was well aware of the existence of parallelism as a rhetorical device and even uti-

1. Published by Brown Judaic Studies, Providence, Rhode Island 2004 (Henceforth: Par- allelism). 2. Above, pp. 5-13.

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lized it as a hermeneutical principle3, mostly without stating so explicitly terminology that later became popular in the כפל and without using the commentaries of Rashbam and others. But these important findings did not encourage Harris to undertake a similar thorough examination of the Torah- commentary, and he rests content reiterating the common view that in this commentary Rashi reveals a “lack of attention” to the subject4, while treating only the few instances where Rashi relates to the subject explicitly, instances whose attribution to Rashi, by the way, is probably mistaken5. Such a cursory treatment of the subject hardly justifies the conclusion that Rashi’s commentaries reflect an evolving awareness of parallelism, since the Psalms commentary, according to some, was written many years after the commentary on the Torah6. Similarly, Harris mentions the claim set forth by Benjamin Gelles7 that Rashi failed to take note of the existence of parallelismus membrorum even after Menahem b. Saruk’s lengthy treatment of it in the very first entry of the Mahberet8, a book that influenced Rashi considerably. Having mentioned the possibility of Menahem’s influ- ence on Rashi also in this regard, one would expect a systematic study on the subject to minutely examine all the other places where awareness of parallelism is reflected in the Mahberet in order to detect a possible connection between them and the commentaries of Rashi9. In the (all too short) chapter on R. Yosef Kara it is asserted that “contrary to what might be expected” the commentaries of this important pupil of Rashi and close associate of Rashbam “do not seem to reflect an aware-

3. Mayer Gruber, Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms, Leiden 2004, pp. 150-154. Though Gruber is principally right, the specific proofs that he brings are, to the best of my judgement, not valid. On this, see my study “’Repetition of Meaning in Different Words’ in the Northern French School of Exegesis” [Hebrew], Hebrew Union College Annual 75 (2006), pp. 55-57 [Hebrew section]. 4. Parallelism, p. 42. 5. In the scientific edition of the commentary on Exodus that Menachem Cohen has pre- pared for the Mikra’ot Gedolot ‘HaKeter’, which has not yet been published in book form but can be purchased on CD rom, Cohen has reached the conclusion that the commentaries on Exodus 15:1, 6 that, according to Harris, seem to reveal an understanding of parallelism as a rhetorical device, are not originally Rashi’s. Harris discusses them in Parallelism, p. 36-40. 6. Above, p. 42. In Repetition (pp. 57-66 [Hebrew Section]) I argue that awareness of the doubling phenomena and its exegetical utility characterizes Rashi’s exegesis in general, in- cluding his commentary on the Torah. 7. Benjamin Gelles, Peshat and Derash in the Exegesis of Rashi, Leiden 1981, pp. 100- 101. 8. Page 17* in the edition of Saenz-Badillos. 9. There are, in fact, several places where Menahem’s use of the doubling principle as a hermeneutical tool is reflected in Rashi’s commentaries (See: Repetition, pp. 57-60 [Hebrew Section]).

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ness of parallelism”10. No comprehensive analysis of Kara’s exegesis that might yield this conclusion is presented, and Harris seems to indicate that he thus concludes only on the basis of the fact that Kara does not use the .terminology in order to indicate the existence of the phenomenon11 כפל This is in spite of the fact that in the chapters on Rashi and Rashbam it is demonstrated that such an awareness can be detected even in cases where this terminology is absent. A careful and thorough examination of Kara's exegesis might have proven wrong the overly simplistic conclusion that Kara lacked an understanding of parallelism. Maybe he did have an awaren- ,terminology, or כפל ess of the phenomenon but did not make use of the even better, maybe he knew that other commentators asserted the existence of the phenomenon but disagreed with them. These are possibilities that have to be taken into serious consideration12. With regard to the subject matter of the study, the awareness of the commentators towards parallelism, Harris seems to be unsuccessful in freeing himself from the anachronistic tendency of approaching the exegetes through categories known to him from modern scholarship, instead of meeting them on their own premises. Diverse phenomena such as semantic -staircase parallel ,(כפל עניין במלות שונות :doubling (in Radak’s terminology ism and the doubled interrogative are all simply labeled “parallelism”, that is, as different expressions of the one and same principle, and thus any awareness towards one or more of these phenomena is automatically interpreted as awareness towards parallelism as a structuring principle that might take the form of any of these and many other phenomena. But this is a claim that has to be proven, not taken for granted, and the actual findings כפל — do not support it. Why does Rashbam label synonymous parallelism -but use a host of other terms to characterize cases of staircase parallel לשון ism? How could Rashi develop sensitivity to the relatively rare occurrences of the double interrogative and at the same time almost oversee the most obvious expression of parallelism (synonymous)? Why did the commentators not develop any term that characterize the ever present synthetic parallelism? Why didn’t they express their awareness of structure in explicit words? All these questions, and more, are not dealt with at a serious level in Harris’ study, and the truth is that he does not bring one single example that bear witness to the fact that, in the eyes of the commentators, parallelism is first and foremost a structuring principle and that, consequently, the 10. Parallelism, p. 49. 11. See above. 12. This is the conclusion that I reach in my doctoral dissertation Awareness and Attitudes Towards “Repetition of Meaning in Different Words” as a Common Feature of Biblical Style in Medieval Jewish Bible Exegesis [Hebrew], Ramat Gan 2005, chapter 4, paragraph 4.

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semantic relations between the stiches are subordinate. When Rashi ob- serves that in the interrogative doubling “the first (question13) begins with -com) ”אם (and the second (question) with (the word ה (an (interrogative mentary on Job 27:10), he is simply commenting on a stylistic feature of the Bible and nothing more. He does not reveal any awareness of structure and even less connects the phenomenon to other features of Biblical style. With regard to what in modern research has been labeled synonymous parallelism the fact that this device is almost universally characterized through .doubling of meaning) cannot easily be disregarded) כפל the terminology of As a matter of fact it says it all. The commentators understood this phenomenon first and foremost as the repetition of meaning, and even though its occasional use in order to interpret a difficult word by way of comparison with another word in the parallel stich might testify to some degree of structural awareness, the structure is certainly grasped as being secondary to the doubling, and the awareness of it is seems more intuitive than con- in verses that have no כפל לשון scious. The commentators also identified binary structure, because to them the repetition of meaning was the main issue14. The wrongly reading of views held by modern scholars into the words of the medievals reaches its climax when Harris sets out to demonstrate that the commentators occasionally gave expression to their awareness of addi- tional aspects of parallelism apart from the synonymous one. I shall analyse some of the more conspicuous cases:

1. On the verse “Better a poor but wise youth that an old but foolish king” (Ecclesiastes 4:13), Rashbam comments: “‘Poor’ — I cannot interpret it as ‘wise’, to see it as a parallel term and a denomination of a ‘wise -poor or wise) to sepa) מסכן man’ […] because there is a tipha accent under upon ‘old’; ‘poor’ is (מוסב) wise). ‘Youth’ is predicated) וחכם rate it from predicated upon ‘than a king’; ‘and wise’ is predicated upon ‘and foolish’.” Harris writes: As Sarah Japhet notes, according to Rashbam’s comment, “the colon ‘better is a poor and wise youth’ is antithetically parallel to ‘than an old and foolish

13. In his translation Harris adds the word stich in brackets, but this understanding has no כפל התמיהה היא, ככל התמיהות הכפולות, שכן דרך הראשונה בה"א :basis in the words of Rashi second) clearly refer back to the word) שנייה first) and) ראשונה The words .והשנייה ב"אם" .(questions) תמיהות 14. Harris (Parallelism, p. 2, n. 3) points out that Lowth’s definition of synonomous parallelism, “the same sentiment is repeated in different, but equivalent terms,” is “strikingly and similar formulas used by Ibn כפל ענין במלות שונות similar” to the formula used by Radak Ezra. But this is only begging the question: why does this inclusive definition of the commentators fit Lowth’s definition of only one aspect of parallelism?

0236-07_REJ07/3-4_05_Haas 467 19/12/07, 9:08 am 468 DID MEDIEVAL JEWISH COMMENTATORS UNDERSTAND BIBLICAL PARALLELISM? cannot be explained as ‘wise’ — as he would מסכן king’; therefore the word have wished to do, in view of other passages, but as an antithesis to ‘king’.” This analysis of Sarah Japhet, who on no apparent basis assumes that indicates antithesis15, is peculiar and the uncritical acceptance מוסב the term of it by Harris even more so. It seems odd to claim that Rashbam refuses to because of its antithetical relation חכם as synonymous with מסכן interpret -when Rashbam himself gives a completely different rea ,מלך to the word son (because of the tipha accent)! It seems clear that Rashbam’s comment and ,מסכן comes to solve two different problems: the meaning of the word the connections of meaning within the verse (in accordance with the ordi- The second problem as well as the solution .(מוסב nary meaning of the term that Rashbam offers become clear by way of comparison with the commentary of R. Avraham ibn Ezra: הזכיר כי הטוב הוא החכם ואפילו יהיה עני, כי "מסכן" כמו דל [...] ו"ילד" כנגד "זקן", ו"מסכן" כנגד "מלך", ו"חכם" כנגד "כסיל". ועניין "ילד" – שכל יום יוסיף חכמה, והזקן לא ידע להזהר עוד בעבור שזקן בכסילות. is like מסכן It comes to teach that the wise is fortunate even if he is poor, since poor) […] ‘youth’ is counterposed to ‘old’, and ‘poor’ is counterposed to) דל ‘king’, and ‘wise’ is counterposed to ‘foolish’. And the meaning of ‘youth’ is — that he increases wisdom daily, but the old does not take heed since he has grown old in his foolishness. Ibn Ezra’s intention is clear: the verse counterposes several pairs of words, and it is difficult to point out what its exact intention is. For example, “young” and “king” are the first words in each stich and one might easily think that the main comparison is between them, but since these two terms are hardly comparable it is unclear whether the verse comes to stress the advantages of being young or of maybe of not carrying the responsibili- ties of rulership. Ibn Ezra therefore feels a need to enlighten his readers as to the true meaning of the verse by way of pointing at the inner connections between its constituents. That this was also what Rashbam intended be- comes clear from the beginning of his comment on the verse (which like its end is also strongly reminiscient of Ibn Ezra’s comment):

15. In her edition of Rashbam’s commentary on Job (The Commentary of Rabbi Samuel Ben Meir (Rashbam) on the Book of Job, Jerusalem 2000, pp. 170-200 [Hebrew]) Sarah Japhet identifies several instances in which Rashbam apparently calls attention to synthetic that normally signifies continuity of ,מוסב and antithetical parallelism by using the word meaning, not semantic and structural relations between words and stiches. I find Japhets conclusions unconvincing, and in Repetition (pp. 3-4 [Hebrew Section], n. 9) I analyse one example brought by Japhet. In the following I relate to another example brought by Harris as found in Japhets discussion of Rashbam’s commentary on Ecclesiastes (Sarah Japhet and Robert Salters, The Commentary of R. Samuel Ben Meir [Rashbam] on Qoheleth [Hebrew and English], Jerusalem 1985, p. 52, n. 138).

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משובח הוא בחור אחד שהוא עני והוא חכם, יותר ממלך שהוא עשיר והוא זקן והוא כסיל, שאינו יודע ומבין עוד להיות זהיר וחכם מחמת שהוא כסיל. It is better to be a poor youngster who is also wise, than being a rich king who is foolish and no longer knows and understands to take heed, since he has grown foolish. In the commentary of R. Ovadiah Sforno the very same problem is solved in a similar manner, not because all three commentators incidentally decided to identify antithetical parallelism in their commentaries on the very same verse, but because they were troubled by the same exegetical dif- ficulty.

צדק לבשתי וילבשני, כמעיל וצניף משפטי On the second half of the verse .2 — "כמעיל וצניף" לבשתי משפט, וכופל מלתו :Job 29:14) Rashbam writes) “As a cloak and a turban I clothed myself in justice. And the meaning is doubled.” Rashbam thus applies the well-known exegetical principle of clothed myself) from the first stich to) לבשתי gapping’ and draws the word‘ the second as well, most probably because the second stich lacks a verb and because it offers him yet another opportunity to identify repetition of meaning in the verse16. So far the intentions that can be deduced from the words of Rashbam. But Sarah Japhet and Robert Harris go much farther and ob- serve awareness of what in modern scholarship is called the “ballast variant.”17 If a component of the first stich is missing from the second (in this then another component of the second stich must be (לבשתי case the word -so as not to undermine the bal (כמעיל וצניף longer (thus the doubled phrase ance of the verse. This might very well be the principle at work in this verse, at least as understood by Japhet and Harris, but Rashbam is not even hinting at it.

3. Commenting on the same example, Harris18 continues: “Moreover, his observation of the ‘ballast variant’ in operation here may also indicate his cognizance of what has been called ‘noun-verb parallelism. For if the verb functions for both stichs of the verse, as Rashbam indicates, and if לבשתי in the second, then the remaining משפטי in the first stich is parallel to צדק a transitive — וילבשני/כמעיל וצניף elements standing in parallel structure are verb in the first clause and two nouns in the second.” This is surely Harris’

16. Identification of the doubling phenomena is a major aim of Rashbam in his commentary on Job, and I completely agree with Harris when he criticizes Kugel’s assertion that this phenomena “ran counter to their notion of the text’s perfection” (See: Parallelism, p. 8). 17. Above, pp. 70-71. 18. Above, p. 71.

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own understanding of the verse, but it cannot attributed to Rashbam! It has yet to be proven that Rashbam was at all interested in the ways that parallel elements are juxtaposed. Nowhere in his commentaries does Rashbam give expression to such an interest.

כי כשלה ירושלים ויהודה נפל, כי לשונם ,In his commentary on Isaiah 3:8 .4 R. Eliezer of Beaugency explains that the ומעלליהם אל ה' למרות עיני כבודו in the first stich is not meant to indicate that what follows provides כי word in the כי the reason for what was stated in the preceding verse, rather the second stich gives the reason for what is written in the first stich. R. can take on a כי Eliezer’s awareness of the well known fact that the word host of different meanings is used by Harris19 to show the commentators’ awareness of yet another type of parallelism: “Though each clause may Eliezer demonstrates that there ,כי begin with the identical Hebrew particle is a morphological, but not semantic, equivalence between them. In this case, it is precisely Eliezer’s understanding of what some would call the syntactic parallelism between the verse’s two stichs that enables him to de- termine the meaning of the verse.” In my opinion Harris fails to distinguish between his own understanding of the verse when understood in accordance with the connection between the stichs that R. Eliezer found and between what can actually be deduced from R. Eliezer’s own words. Moreover, the claim that only Eliezer’s understanding of the verse’s structure enabled to peruse it the way he did is an exaggeration. R. Yosef Kara also explains the in different ways in its two ocurrences in the verse. According to כי word signifies result, Jerusalem stumbled for all the reasons כי Kara the first signifies cause, all כי mentioned in the preceeding verses, and the second these reasons are themselves the result of the people’s rebellion. Are we then to conclude that Kara, contrary to Harris’ contention (see above), after all did have an awareness of parallelism? Not necessarily. The attribution of two different meanings to the same word in one context does not indicate awareness of syntactic parallelism.

Isaiah) וינקת חלב גוים, ושד מלכים תינקי In his commentary on the verse .5 ו"שוד" – מלשון "שדים" (יחזקאל טז 7); כפל על :R. Elizer comments (60:16 the word shod is (derived) from the word meaning breasts“ — "חלב גוים" (shadayim); it doubles (the phrase) the milk of the nations.” From this short comment Harris20 learns that R. Eliezer “understand(s) the nature of chiasm as an occasional feature of parallelism.” The structure of the verse is surely 19. Above, p. 76-77. 20. Above, p. 80.

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chiastic, but nowhere does R. Eliezer hint at the general understanding at- refers only to the fact of doubled כפל tributed to him by Harris. The word meaning, not to the structure of the verse or the paralleling of its constituents.

The last modern view that Harris attributes to the commentators without sufficient evidence is their understanding of parallelism as being characteristic especially of Biblical poetry. This fact is taken for granted throughout the book21, but the best proof that Harris can come up with is that Rashbam “tends to call attention to parallelistic structure in texts that modern scholarship considers to be poetic in character.”22 This proof is both circular and anachronistic in nature. Anachronistic, because texts that are considered poetic by modern scholars are not necessarily considered so by the medievals, and as a matter of fact the whole issue of the distinction between different literary genres among Medieval commentators has not been thor- oughly clarified. Circular, because one could just as well claim that exactly the opposite is true, that Rashbam calls attention to the phenomenon mainly in poetic texts because in them it occurs much more frequently. As I have already pointed out elsewhere23, Rashbam (and other commentators as well) called attention to the repetition of an idea in different words also in non-poetic texts. A second circle is added when Harris asserts that Bekhor Shor’s calling attention to parallelism in a legal text shows that this exegete knew that also legal texts can be poetic in structure24. One could just as well

21. For example, in his commentary on Numbers 13:7 Ibn Ezra formulates a maxim: In his translation Harris adds in .הטעם כפול כמשפט, שהיא דרך לדבר בטעם אחד במלות משונות brackets his own understandings to Ibn Ezra’s elliptic style: “The sense is doubled according to the rule (of poetic discourse), for it is the way (of poetry) to speak in one sense wih differ- actually refer to (דרך) ”and “way (משפט) ”ent words.” Do the slightly obscure terms “rule Biblical poetics? A careful examination of all the places in which Ibn Ezra uses these terms -the way of proph“ — כדרך הנבואות is most probably an abbreviated form of כדרך show that esies” (commentaries on Gen. 49:6-7; Lev. 16: 29; Num. 10:35, 12:6; Deut. 32:2; Isa. 1:3; is כמשפט the way of eloquency (commentary on Deut. 32:7), and — דרך צחות Hab. 2:1) or the rule of eloquent language (commentary on Psalms — כמשפט לשון צחות an abbreviation of 73:2). Let us not forget, also, that the Spanish commentators of the Golden Age were more than reluctant to define any part of Biblical literature as poetry, since even literary units that -song or poetry) do not fulfill the formal requirements of Ara) שירה are explicitly defined as bic Medieval poetry, that is, they are not written in rhyme and meter (see, for example: Mordechai Cohen, “’The Best of Poetry…: Literary Approaches to the Bible in the Spanish Peshat Tradition, Torah Umadda Journal 6 (1995-1996), p. 22; Uriel Simon, Four Ap- proaches to the Book of Psalms: From Saadia Gaon to Abraham Ibn Ezra, trans. by Lenn J. Schramm, New York 1991, pp. 168-169). 22. Parallelism, p. 56. 23. Jair Haas, “‘Kefel Lashon’ as an Exegetical Principle and the Awareness of Poetry as a Literary Genre in the Commentaries of Rashbam” [Hebrew], Beit Mikra 47 (2002), p. 281, n. 3. 24. Parallelism, p. 94.

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assume that Bekhor-Shor, like Rashbam, thought the doubling feature to be a characteristic of Biblical style in general, and not only of Biblical poetry.

To sum up: the direction taken by Harris in Discerning Parallelism, following the approach of Sarah Japhet in her study on the Job commentary of Rashbam, is an unfortunate one. The aim of presenting the findings of modern scholarship as long anticipated by past generations of Jewish scholars is in and of itself a legitimate one, but it must be founded on un-biased analysis of the source material as it appears before the scholar. Harris fails in this regard, and the result is a reading into the words of the commentators’ intentions and understandings that aren’t there25. The great exegetes of the Northern French school were men of astonishing literary awareness and their discoveries in this field are impressing. But they still constitute the first tiny steps towards a full understanding of the Bible’s literary character- istics, and it is unrealistic to expect them to reach understandings current in modern scholarship. It seems that their awareness of parallelism was infe- rior to that of modern scholars, and Harris, or any other scholar for that matter, has yet to provide convincing proof that it is not so.

25. Also symptomatic of Harris' anachronistic approach is his failure to point out the huge difference that exists between the French commentators understanding of the phenomenon and that of the Spanish commentators respectively: while the Spaniards thought mainly in terms of doubled ideas, the French commentators saw the essence of semantic doubling in the Bible’s use of synonyms (see Repetition, pp. 67-79 [Hebrew Section]). This difference is obvious to anyone approaching the subject from the premises set forth in this critique, but seems to have escaped Harris because of his hasty equation of semantic doubling as understood by the medievals with the modern concept of parallelism.

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